Paul Steinhauser

EXCLUSIVE — A Republican group that opposes President Trump’s re-election is going up with a new ad on Saturday that spotlights the president’s comments in March that he didn’t “take responsibility at all” for a widespread lack of coronavirus testing Americans faced at a time when the pandemic was spreading across the nation.

The commercial by The Lincoln Project – shared first with Fox News — highlights the late Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and recounts how, as the Allied commander in charge of the successful World War II D-Day landings in Europe, he was prepared to take responsibility if the massive operation had failed.

“Great leaders prepare for every eventuality. The hope for the best, but they prepare for the worst,” the narrator in the spot says.

The ad then uses the clip of President Trump saying, “no I don’t take responsibility at all” when asked at a White House press conference about the struggles at the time to expand coronavirus testing. The clip of the president refusing to take responsibility went viral and has been used by Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s campaign and other Democrats to criticize the president’s actions to combat the pandemic.

The president has repeatedly pushed back the past three months against charges from his critics that he initially downplayed the severity of the coronavirus and later fumbled the federal response.

Trump, in a Rose Garden event on Friday, once again spotlighted that his actions saved “millions of lives,” crediting his decision in late January to “stop people very early on from China, from coming in. Because we stopped early at the end of January, very early, people coming from China who were infected coming into our country.” The coronavirus originated in China.

The narrator in the ad goes on to say “isn’t it time America returned to a different kind of leadership.”

The Lincoln Project says the spot will appear digitally starting Saturday and will run on TV in Washington DC and other television markets starting on Tuesday.

The Lincoln Project was formed late last year by well-known Never Trumpers. Among them are George Conway, the husband of senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, as well as Republican consultants John Weaver, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, who were leading political advisers to the late Sen. John McCain. Weaver was also the top political adviser for then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign.

On Monday the group announced it was spending half a million dollars to run a scathing TV commercial in six general election battleground states and the DC market that targets the president over his comments and record on race relations amid a wave of unrest in cities across the country sparked by the death of George Floyd.

The new ad is the second by the group to zing the president over the coronavirus. Last month they ran a commercial titled “Mourning in America,” which was a riff on the successful “Morning in America” ad by President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election team.

EXCLUSIVE — A Republican group that opposes President Trump’s re-election is going up with a new ad on Saturday that spotlights the president’s comments in March that he didn’t “take responsibility at all” for a widespread lack of coronavirus testing Americans faced at a time when the pandemic was spreading across the nation.

The commercial by The Lincoln Project – shared first with Fox News — highlights the late Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and recounts how, as the Allied commander in charge of the successful World War II D-Day landings in Europe, he was prepared to take responsibility if the massive operation had failed.

“Great leaders prepare for every eventuality. The hope for the best, but they prepare for the worst,” the narrator in the spot says.

The ad then uses the clip of President Trump saying, “no I don’t take responsibility at all” when asked at a White House press conference about the struggles at the time to expand coronavirus testing. The clip of the president refusing to take responsibility went viral and has been used by Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s campaign and other Democrats to criticize the president’s actions to combat the pandemic.

The president has repeatedly pushed back the past three months against charges from his critics that he initially downplayed the severity of the coronavirus and later fumbled the federal response.

Trump, in a Rose Garden event on Friday, once again spotlighted that his actions saved “millions of lives,” crediting his decision in late January to “stop people very early on from China, from coming in. Because we stopped early at the end of January, very early, people coming from China who were infected coming into our country.” The coronavirus originated in China.

The narrator in the ad goes on to say “isn’t it time America returned to a different kind of leadership.”

The Lincoln Project says the spot will appear digitally starting Saturday and will run on TV in Washington DC and other television markets starting on Tuesday.

The Lincoln Project was formed late last year by well-known Never Trumpers. Among them are George Conway, the husband of senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, as well as Republican consultants John Weaver, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, who were leading political advisers to the late Sen. John McCain. Weaver was also the top political adviser for then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign.

On Monday the group announced it was spending half a million dollars to run a scathing TV commercial in six general election battleground states and the DC market that targets the president over his comments and record on race relations amid a wave of unrest in cities across the country sparked by the death of George Floyd.

The new ad is the second by the group to zing the president over the coronavirus. Last month they ran a commercial titled “Mourning in America,” which was a riff on the successful “Morning in America” ad by President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election team.

“It was an honor to compete alongside one of the most talented groups of candidates the Democratic party has ever fielded — and I am proud to say that we are going into this general election a united party,” Biden said in a statement. “I am going to spend every day between now and November 3rd fighting to earn the votes of Americans all across this great country so that, together, we can win the battle for the soul of this nation, and make sure that as we rebuild our economy, everyone comes along.”

Biden now has 1,993 delegates, according to The Associated Press. There are still contests to come in eight states and three U.S. territories.

But Sanders has kept his name on the ballots as he continues to capture delegates in order to have influence in the voting on the party’s platform at the summer nominating convention. With Sanders winning a small percentage of delegates, and with many states that were scheduled to hold primaries and caucuses in April and May pushing back their contests until June or even later due to health concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, Biden’s timetable to clinch the nomination was delayed.

In April, the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hammered out a deal to begin joint fundraising and other partnerships. So Biden’s clinching of the nomination is mostly a formality and doesn’t really alter his relationship with the national party.

“Vice President Biden is our presumptive nominee and we are already coordinating across all areas with his campaign to prepare for the general election,” David Bergstein, DNC director of battleground state communications, told Fox News.

Four years ago Hillary Clinton also clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in early June. The former first lady, senator from New York, and secretary of state went over the top on June 6, thanks to a combination of pledged and superdelegates. Sanders – who battled Clinton for the nomination in a bitter and divisive primary process – didn’t endorse his party’s nominee until a month later, at a rally in New Hampshire.

In reforms made by the Democratic Party as a result of the friction in the 2016 primaries, superdelegates – party officials and Democratic governors, senators, and House members – were stripped of their ability to back a presidential candidate in the first round of convention balloting.

A top member of President Trump‘s 2016 presidential campaign is coming on board the 2020 re-election team.

Trump campaign officials on Friday confirmed to Fox News that Jason Miller is joining the re-election team as a senior adviser.

Miller – who was a top communications adviser on the Trump 2016 campaign – will focus on strategy and help coordinate between the re-election team and the White House. But he will not run communications for the campaign, a role now occupied by communications director Tim Murtaugh.

Miller was named White House communications director during the transition following Trump’s 2016 victory. But he backed out after reports that he had an extramarital affair and impregnated another campaign official. But Miller – a Trump loyalist — has remained close with the president.

“Every day I strive to become a better husband, a better father and a better person, and I am humbled by the opportunity for a second chance to serve President Trump,” Miller said in a statement.

Joe Biden called the news that the nation’s sky-high unemployment level dropped “a sigh of relief,” but he accused President Trump of “spiking the ball” on Friday’s jobs report and argued the president was “completely oblivious” to the tens of millions of Americans still out of work.

The former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee also described as “despicable” remarks Trump made earlier in the day about George Floyd looking down and seeing “a great day” for the nation.

Biden gave his brief address about two hours after the president repeatedly touted the jobs report as he spoke for 40 straight minutes in the Rose Garden. The Labor Department reported that the national unemployment rate unexpectedly declined to 13.3 percent in May – down from 14.7 percent in April.

The jobs level had soared to its highest rate in nearly a century after much of the nation’s economy was shut down in March and April to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which has swept the nation and the globe. With more than 42 million people having filed for unemployment since the start of the outbreak, some economists predicted the jobless rate would hit 20 percent, a level not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But Friday’s report indicated that 2.5 million people gained jobs in May, as many states and counties across the country began to loosen coronavirus social distancing restrictions and reopen their economies last month.

The president tweeted about the jobs report 12 times in the hours following the figure’s morning release. And in his remarks, Trump proclaimed that “today is probably the great comeback in American history.”

He predicted that “it’s not going to stop here. it’s going to keep going.”

The president forecast that “next year’s going to be one of the best years we’ve ever had economically,” but standing outside the White House, he warned that the economic recovery would falter next year if “the wrong people get in here.”

And on Twitter, he took another shot at his Democratic challenger saying “The only one that can kill this comeback is Sleepy Joe Biden!”

Biden emphasized that he’s “truly glad to see that two and a half million Americans have gotten their jobs back. For those families, it’s a sigh of relief.”

But taking aim at Trump, he said “I was disturbed though to the see the president crowing this morning, basically hanging a ‘mission accomplished’ banner out there when there’s so much more work to be done. So many Americans are still hurting. More than 20 million Americans, one out of every seven workers, is still out of work. For an enormous swath of our country, their dreams are still on hold and they’re still struggling to put food on the table and wondering what will happen tomorrow.”

Biden — who made his comments in an address at Delaware State University, a historically black school — noted the racial disparities in the jobs report, saying that black unemployment went up and Latino unemployment jumped.

“While temporary layoffs went down, permanent layoffs went up,” Biden emphasized. “Donald Trump still doesn’t get it. He’s out there spiking the ball, completely oblivious to the tens of millions of people who are facing the greatest struggle of their lives. These folks aren’t feeling any less pain today than they were yesterday.”

And he charged that “a president who takes no responsibility for costing millions and millions of Americans their jobs deserves no credit when a fraction of them return.”

The president – during his comments – referenced George Floyd. The 46-year-old black man’s death last week–after a white Minneapolis police officer put his knee on the handcuffed Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes–sparked peaceful protests as well as violent clashes and rioting that are still causing unrest in cities across the nation.

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying there’s a great thing happening for our country,” Trump said. “There’s a great day for him, a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

It was unclear what the president was referring to when he said “great thing.”

Up until that point, Trump had mostly been praising the jobs report. But he had stressed how important it was for law enforcement to “dominate the streets” amid the wave of unrest. And moments before mentioning Floyd’s name the president said that “equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement, regardless of race, color, gender, creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. But they have to receive it. We all saw what happened last week.”

“We’re speaking of a man who was brutally killed by an act of needless violence and by a larger tide of injustice that has metastasized on this president’s watch as he’s moved to split us based on race and religion, ethnicity,” Biden stressed. “George Floyd’s last words, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ have echoed all across this nation and quite frankly around the world.”

And he charged that “for the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd I frankly think is despicable.”

The president, in his Rose Garden event, once again praised his administration’s response to the coronavirus. He spotlighted that his actions saved “millions of lives,” crediting his decision in late January to “stop people very early on from China, from coming in. Because we stopped early at the end of January, very early, people coming from China who were infected coming into our country.”

The global pandemic originated in China.

Biden – who for nearly three months has blasted Trump for originally downplaying the severity of the virus and then botching the federal response – accused the president of “complete incompetence and mismanagement of the response.”

The former vice president said that the United States has 4 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s deaths due to the pandemic.

“Donald Trump is patting himself on his back. He just has no idea… what’s really going on in this country. He has no idea the dept of the pain that so many people are still enduring,” Biden emphasized. “He remains completely oblivious to the human toll of his indifference. It’s time for him to step out of his own bunker and take a look around at the consequences of his words and his actions.”

As he was departing Delaware State following his speech, Fox News shouted a question to Biden from a distance. But the former vice president didn’t stop to answer.

Joe Biden called the news that the nation’s sky-high unemployment level dropped “a sigh of relief,” but he accused President Trump of “spiking the ball” on Friday’s jobs report and argued the president was “completely oblivious” to the tens of millions of Americans still out of work.

The former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee also described as “despicable” remarks Trump made earlier in the day about George Floyd looking down and seeing “a great day” for the nation.

Biden gave his brief address about two hours after the president repeatedly touted the jobs report as he spoke for 40 straight minutes in the Rose Garden. The Labor Department reported that the national unemployment rate unexpectedly declined to 13.3 percent in May – down from 14.7 percent in April.

The jobs level had soared to its highest rate in nearly a century after much of the nation’s economy was shut down in March and April to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which has swept the nation and the globe. With more than 42 million people having filed for unemployment since the start of the outbreak, some economists predicted the jobless rate would hit 20 percent, a level not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But Friday’s report indicated that 2.5 million people gained jobs in May, as many states and counties across the country began to loosen coronavirus social distancing restrictions and reopen their economies last month.

The president tweeted about the jobs report 12 times in the hours following the figure’s morning release. And in his remarks, Trump proclaimed that “today is probably the great comeback in American history.”

He predicted that “it’s not going to stop here. it’s going to keep going.”

The president forecast that “next year’s going to be one of the best years we’ve ever had economically,” but standing outside the White House, he warned that the economic recovery would falter next year if “the wrong people get in here.”

And on Twitter, he took another shot at his Democratic challenger saying “The only one that can kill this comeback is Sleepy Joe Biden!”

Biden emphasized that he’s “truly glad to see that two and a half million Americans have gotten their jobs back. For those families, it’s a sigh of relief.”

But taking aim at Trump, he said “I was disturbed though to the see the president crowing this morning, basically hanging a ‘mission accomplished’ banner out there when there’s so much more work to be done. So many Americans are still hurting. More than 20 million Americans, one out of every seven workers, is still out of work. For an enormous swath of our country, their dreams are still on hold and they’re still struggling to put food on the table and wondering what will happen tomorrow.”

Biden — who made his comments in an address at Delaware State University, a historically black school — noted the racial disparities in the jobs report, saying that black unemployment went up and Latino unemployment jumped.

“While temporary layoffs went down, permanent layoffs went up,” Biden emphasized. “Donald Trump still doesn’t get it. He’s out there spiking the ball, completely oblivious to the tens of millions of people who are facing the greatest struggle of their lives. These folks aren’t feeling any less pain today than they were yesterday.”

And he charged that “a president who takes no responsibility for costing millions and millions of Americans their jobs deserves no credit when a fraction of them return.”

The president – during his comments – referenced George Floyd. The 46-year-old black man’s death last week–after a white Minneapolis police officer put his knee on the handcuffed Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes–sparked peaceful protests as well as violent clashes and rioting that are still causing unrest in cities across the nation.

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying there’s a great thing happening for our country,” Trump said. “There’s a great day for him, a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

It was unclear what the president was referring to when he said “great thing.”

Up until that point, Trump had mostly been praising the jobs report. But he had stressed how important it was for law enforcement to “dominate the streets” amid the wave of unrest. And moments before mentioning Floyd’s name the president said that “equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement, regardless of race, color, gender, creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. But they have to receive it. We all saw what happened last week.”

“We’re speaking of a man who was brutally killed by an act of needless violence and by a larger tide of injustice that has metastasized on this president’s watch as he’s moved to split us based on race and religion, ethnicity,” Biden stressed. “George Floyd’s last words, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ have echoed all across this nation and quite frankly around the world.”

And he charged that “for the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd I frankly think is despicable.”

The president, in his Rose Garden event, once again praised his administration’s response to the coronavirus. He spotlighted that his actions saved “millions of lives,” crediting his decision in late January to “stop people very early on from China, from coming in. Because we stopped early at the end of January, very early, people coming from China who were infected coming into our country.”

The global pandemic originated in China.

Biden – who for nearly three months has blasted Trump for originally downplaying the severity of the virus and then botching the federal response – accused the president of “complete incompetence and mismanagement of the response.”

The former vice president said that the United States has 4 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s deaths due to the pandemic.

“Donald Trump is patting himself on his back. He just has no idea… what’s really going on in this country. He has no idea the dept of the pain that so many people are still enduring,” Biden emphasized. “He remains completely oblivious to the human toll of his indifference. It’s time for him to step out of his own bunker and take a look around at the consequences of his words and his actions.”

As he was departing Delaware State following his speech, Fox News shouted a question to Biden from a distance. But the former vice president didn’t stop to answer.

He said Google detected Chinese hackers who were using malicious emails to try and breach the Biden campaign staffers’ accounts, with the Iranian hackers targeting the Trump campaign staffers’ accounts.

“The Trump campaign has been briefed that foreign actors unsuccessfully attempted to breach the technology of our staff,” a Trump campaign aide told Fox News. “We are vigilant about cybersecurity and do not discuss any of our precautions.”

The Biden campaign said in a statement that it is “aware of reports from Google that a foreign actor has made unsuccessful attempts to access the personal email accounts of campaign staff. We have known from the beginning of our campaign that we would be subject to such attacks and we are prepared for them. Biden for President takes cybersecurity seriously, we will remain vigilant against these threats, and will ensure that the campaign’s assets are secured.”

The day after Mattis described the United States’ past three years “without mature leadership” under Trump, who “tries to divide us” and who threatens constitutional order, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee tweeted that “Jim Mattis and I haven’t always agreed on everything, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more powerful indictment of Trump’s actions and character than the one he’s written.”

Then quoting from Mattis’ statement, Biden added: “We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose.”

Biden’s been extremely critical of the president’s response to peaceful protests, as well as violent clashes in the week and a half since Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer put his knee on Floyd’s throat for at least eight minutes in moments captured on cellphone footage.

The statement by Mattis — which he gave to The Atlantic on Wednesday — came after the president threatened to deploy the military in cities across the country. And it came after federal forces on Monday forcibly dispersed a crowd of demonstrators from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square in the nation’s capital, which allowed the president to make the short walk from the White House to hold a Bible in front of the church for a photo op that included Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis wrote. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago,” Mattis said, “I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Excoriating the president, he urged Americans to “reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”

The president tweeted that Mattis’ “primary strength was not military, but rather personal public relations. I gave him a new life, things to do, and battles to win, but he seldom ‘brought home the bacon’. I didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about him, and many others agree. Glad he is gone!”

Mattis resigned in late 2018 after disagreeing with the president’s move to reduce the deployment of U.S. troops in Syria.

Mattis served in the Marine Corps for 44 years, rising to the rank of general during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was already serving for two years as commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command when then Sens. Barack Obama and Biden were sworn in as president and vice president, respectively, in January 2009. Mattis held that position until 2011 when he became commander of the U.S. Central Command.

Mattis retired from that position in 2013 after reportedly not seeing eye-to-eye with the Obama White House over his desire to increase the U.S. troop presence in Syria, which was engulfed in a civil war.

The day after Mattis described the United States’ past three years “without mature leadership” under Trump, who “tries to divide us” and who threatens constitutional order, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee tweeted that “Jim Mattis and I haven’t always agreed on everything, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more powerful indictment of Trump’s actions and character than the one he’s written.”

Then quoting from Mattis’ statement, Biden added: “We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose.”

Biden’s been extremely critical of the president’s response to peaceful protests, as well as violent clashes in the week and a half since Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer put his knee on Floyd’s throat for at least eight minutes in moments captured on cellphone footage.

The statement by Mattis — which he gave to The Atlantic on Wednesday — came after the president threatened to deploy the military in cities across the country. And it came after federal forces on Monday forcibly dispersed a crowd of demonstrators from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square in the nation’s capital, which allowed the president to make the short walk from the White House to hold a Bible in front of the church for a photo op that included Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis wrote. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago,” Mattis said, “I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Excoriating the president, he urged Americans to “reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”

The president tweeted that Mattis’ “primary strength was not military, but rather personal public relations. I gave him a new life, things to do, and battles to win, but he seldom ‘brought home the bacon’. I didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about him, and many others agree. Glad he is gone!”

Mattis resigned in late 2018 after disagreeing with the president’s move to reduce the deployment of U.S. troops in Syria.

Mattis served in the Marine Corps for 44 years, rising to the rank of general during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was already serving for two years as commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command when then Sens. Barack Obama and Biden were sworn in as president and vice president, respectively, in January 2009. Mattis held that position until 2011 when he became commander of the U.S. Central Command.

Mattis retired from that position in 2013 after reportedly not seeing eye-to-eye with the Obama White House over his desire to increase the U.S. troop presence in Syria, which was engulfed in a civil war.

Hours after President Trump tweeted that the GOP is “now forced to seek another” location other than Charlotte, N.C., to host this summer’s Republican National Convention, party officials said Thursday that the event, indeed, “will be held in another city.”

The decision comes after North Carolina‘s Democratic governor said GOP leaders needed to provide plans for a scaled-down event due to coronavirus pandemic health concerns. The party pressed for a full in-person convention, which Gov. Roy Cooper essentially said they could not accommodate.

“Due to the directive from the governor that our convention cannot go on as planned as required by our rules, the celebration of the president’s acceptance of the Republican nomination will be held in another city,” an RNC official told Fox News.

What other places could be considered?

The search for a new city to host the convention is now underway. Among the locations that could land the event is Nashville, Tenn. Republican party officials are heading to Nashville later this week.

Other places in contention to grab the convention are Orlando and Jacksonville, Fla., as well as sites in Georgia. Republican governors in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee have all said in recent days that they would welcome the GOP convention.

The governor of Nevada is a Democrat, but GOP sources say Las Vegas is another city that Republican Party officials may scout out in the coming days.